Saint Anthony and the Demons:
A Queer Theological Reading

The Legacy of Saint Anthony

Saint Anthony, a Christian monk from Egypt, is widely regarded as the father of monasticism. Born into a wealthy landowner family, he renounced his inheritance at 18, giving away all his possessions to live an ascetic life in the desert. According to legend, Anthony endured a series of supernatural temptations during this period, which have been immortalized in Christian art. In my interpretation of The Temptation of Saint Anthony, I reimagine this iconic narrative through the lens of Queer Theology.

Queer Theology: A Subversive Framework

Queer Theology, a framework that reclaims and reinterprets Christian texts through the lived experiences of the LGBTQ+ community, challenges the rigid binaries of gender and sexuality embedded in traditional theology. It is intentionally subversive, deconstructing the “natural” categories that have long dictated the structure of sexual and gender identities. Through this lens, Christianity is reclaimed for queer bodies and souls, offering a radical shift in understanding divinity, morality, and embodiment.

In classical portrayals, Saint Anthony is often depicted as a stoic figure, tempted by a woman or tormented by demons—forces representing sin and sensual desires—while he embodies virtue and spiritual resilience. This narrative perpetuates a binary opposition: the man symbolizes rationality, discipline, and spirituality, while the woman, associated with sexuality and sin, is reduced to representing the body’s primal, animalistic urges.

Embracing Queer Desires

In my work, I reject this binary division. Instead, I propose that the male body can be both a subject and an object of desire, collapsing the artificial separation between spirit and flesh. By doing so, I dismantle the hierarchy that places spirituality above the body, particularly as it relates to sexual desire. The body is not a source of shame or sin but a vessel of freedom and expression.

The demons surrounding Saint Anthony, traditionally seen as external threats to his virtue, in my interpretation, symbolize the societal and religious structures that oppress and regulate individual sexuality. Rather than representing otherworldly forces, these demons embody the symbolic order—a concept rooted in Lacanian psychoanalysis, referring to the network of cultural norms, laws, and language that shape human identity and experience. Here, the symbolic order is manifested through institutions like the idea of God, the Church, and society, which enforce heteronormative ideals and suppress queer desires.

This act resists the traditional Christian view, articulated by figures such as Saint Augustine, that confines sexual morality to procreative acts within the bounds of marriage. In this reading, virtue lies not in celibacy or repression, but in the radical reclamation of the body’s desires. Anal masturbation emerges as a heroic act of defiance against the reproductive, phallocentric discourse, embodying a powerful assertion of freedom.

2012, oil on canvas, 120x160